Tour Scotland 4K short travel video clip, with Scottish music, of the lighthouse and uninhabited buildings on ancestry, genealogy, family history visit to the Island of Stroma or Stroma, is an island off the northern coast of the mainland of Scotland. A welcome sanctuary from the area’s treacherous tides and currents, Stroma may have been a base for Pictish seafarers, while the Norse later called it Straumey, meaning “ island in the stream ”. In more recent centuries, Stroma gained notoriety as a hub for smuggling and illicit whisky distilling. It is the most southerly of the islands in the Pentland Firth between the Orkney islands and the traditional county of Caithness and therein the civil parish of Canisbay, Although Stroma is located only a few miles off the Scottish coast, the savage weather and ferociously strong tides of the Pentland Firth meant that the island's inhabitants were very isolated, causing them to be largely self sufficient, trading agricultural produce and fish with the mainlanders. Most of the islanders were fishermen and crofters; some also worked as maritime pilots to guide vessels through the treacherous waters of the Pentland Firth. The tides and currents meant that shipwrecks were frequent. The island was relatively overpopulated; by 1901 the population was nearly twice that of sixty years previously, and there was little spare land left for farming. Families of six to eight children were common, but there was simply not enough work for all, so the eldest often left for the mainland or emigrated to Canada or the United States to find work. Stroma is now abandoned, with the houses of its former inhabitants unoccupied and falling into ruin. Its population fell gradually through the first half of the 20th century as inhabitants drifted away to seek opportunities elsewhere, as economic problems and Stroma's isolation made life on the island increasingly unsupportable. From an all-time peak of 375 people in 1901, the population fell to just 12 by 1961 and the last islanders left at the end of the following year. Stroma's final abandonment came in 1997 when the lighthouse keepers and their families departed. The island is now owned by one of its former inhabitants, who uses it to graze sheep. The lighthouse built to a design by David Stevenson. The lighthouse was subjected to a machine gun attack by a German aircraft on 22 February 1941. It caused little damage and no injuries, and the keepers were soon able to make repairs. In 1997 the station was converted to automatic operation, utilising a 250 watt metal halide lamp which rotates on a gearless pedestal. The Sinclairs of Mey sold their portion of the island to Colonel F. B. Imbert-Terry in 1929, who sold it in turn to John Hoyland, an umbrella manufacturer from Yorkshire, England, in 1947. In December 1960, Stroma was sold to Jimmy Simpson, an islander whose family had moved to farm on the mainland near the Castle of Mey in 1943. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day.
All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.
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